KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan - The flight line on Kandahar Airfield is baked by the Afghan sun and buzzing 24 hours a day with the sound of helicopters, cargo planes and fighter jets. Patrolling the flight line are service members from five nations who come together to ensure it remains safe for aircraft to land and take off.
Flight Line Security is an organization that consists of American, Belgian, Australian, British and Danish Service members playing their own respective roles. The organization of FLS is broken down into elements, each given a rotating responsibility for securing flightline entry control points and manning flight line patrols.
"Each element usually has a leader from a different country," said Cpl. Simon Mahoney, a native of Adelaide, Australia, who serves as an element leader for FLS with the 3rd Security Squadron, Australian army. "My element is a mix. I've got Belgian, Danish and Americans. There is another element headed by an American. Each country has a share in the element leadership."
Cooperation between the nations is an integral part of providing security for the airfield. Each nation brings it's own training to the table with different perspectives, making communication and teamwork keys to success.
"I'm in an infantry unit in the Royal Danish Air Force," said Cpl. Ken Ishikawa, a native of Copenhagen, Denmark, who currently serves with FLS. "The Americans are in a military police unit. They do things differently than we would do," he said, about the challenge of working through differing ideas on how to take care of problems.
"Communication is one of the most important things we have," said U.S. Airman 1st Class Kyle William Carmen, a native of Portland, Oregon, who serves with the FLS. Carmen explained further that it is important to learn some of the language of his NATO team members, and help them learn some English words to ensure good communication.
Solid leadership allows these Airmen from all over the world to effectively mix their different styles and ideas to make a stronger force.
Lt. Jean-Nicolas Focquet, from the Belgian F-16 Detachment on KAF, who also is assigned as the FLS officer in charge, explained that all nations have their own training and own way of doing things, and because of that their leader must bring them together.
"As a commander, I need to say 'I'm not a Belgian commander, I'm just a commander,'" said Focquet, explaining how he ensures all his airmen have a single standard they can follow in order to function as a team.
Airman 1st Class Stephan Serra, a guard with FLS and native of Phoenix, explained that Service members from other NATO nations may do things differently, but "if you find a middle ground it's very easy to work with them."
As Operation Enduring Freedom comes to a close, the job of ensuring the flight line is secure will change. Many of the contributing nations are sending their airmen home. Once Operation Resolute Support begins on Jan 1, 2015, FLS will change from a joint operation to a U.S. task.
"The flightline isn't perfect..." said Focquet. "We have to smoothly transition from our method of security to the U.S. method to ensure the flightline remains secure."
For now, as forces continue to draw down at KAF, the nations continue to work together and protect the flightline. Airmen continue to learn from each other and how each nation does the job of securing the flightline.
"Being at the ECPs sounds boring, but a lot of times it can be fun," said Carmen. "It's not the job, it's the people you're with."
"I love it," said Mahoney. "I've been in the forces for six years and I've wanted to come to Afghanistan for that long. It's pretty hard for us to get deployed, but once we do, we're happy with whatever we're doing."
Like any job, flight line security is stressful and hard, said Serra. He said he's glad to have the opportunity to come out here and to have this experience with NATO, to work with leadership in a different way than he is used to.
"At the end of the day, it's what I signed up for, " he said.
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